It’s the season for career advice blog posts

Fresher magazine

Ahhh April, the season of cherry blossoms. It’s the beginning of the school year, the beginning of the fiscal year… and for those that graduated school and found corporate jobs, it’s the beginning of a new life. Which means that once again, it’s the season when many Japanese bloggers take to their keyboards to pass on their wisdom to these “kids”!

Yes, the blogosphere sees a sudden burst of articles of this ilk, with titles such as “Messages from an old geezer”, “50 books that the newly employed should read”, “How to get ahead in the workplace without trying too hard” etc.

These shiny eyed, wild eyed kids in white shirts and black suits are called “fresh man”. It’s never fresh “men”, and always pronounced with an odd sense of glee. Like, fRRREsh man. Sometimes the word “freshers” is used, which is just so weird that I can’t bring myself to use it…

Workplace culture is always a popular topic in the online sphere, for both English and Japanese. I think this particular phenomenon is unique to the Japanese blogosphere though, due to the differences in corporate hiring habits.